Vesta Preferred offers misleading advice to renters

by Joe Zekas on 1/28/13

Greg Pekarsky, in a blog post (screen cap) at Vesta Preferred, serves up some of the silliest advice imaginable for renters interested in learning about actual rent prices in Chicago. Pekarsky’s blog identifies him as Vesta’s “Managing Principle” [sic]. He advocates the following.

Step one – start with online research at Zillow and Rentometer.

Step two – contact multiple agents and get their opinions of rent ranges.

Step three – write down the price ranges you’ve heard from the different sources on a sheet of paper.

Bring this paper with you as you begin apartment hunting. If a price seems you [sic] high, you no longer have to second guess yourself. You’ll have a convenient way of comparing the landlord’s asking prices to what people are actually paying.

If Pekarsky doesn’t know full well that steps two and three are so laughably useless that renters will ignore them, he ought to. He may be hoping that they stop at step one – Zillow – where they’ll encounter the nearly 1,000 garbage ads placed by agents from his firm, and 1,000s more garbage ads placed by other rental services.

I’m using the term “garbage ads” as a shorthand way of referring to ads with incorrect rent amounts, misstated features, and links that mislead renters into thinking they’re contacting a property manager rather than a rental agent.

The screen cap above illustrates the problems: available 1-bedrooms at Columbus Plaza rented for at least $70 a month more than the advertised price, and did not include in-unit washer /dryers. Clicking on the “Contact Property Manager” button would take you to the rental agent who provided misleading information rather than to the property manager, who would give you accurate information.

Want to know what real rental prices are, and what’s really available for rent? If you’re looking in one of the areas covered by YoChicago’s at-a-glance apartment lists, you’ll find links to near real-time price and availability information for almost all of the larger buildings.

If you’re looking to rent a single-family home or condo, you’ll find virtually all of them listed in the local MLS. Why would anyone, as Pekarsky suggests, contact brokers for rent range estimates when they can get accurate rents and availabilities by doing a rental search for MLS-listing properties at reputable broker sites? You’ll find links to several of those sites, clients of our parent firm, in our at-a-glance lists.

ADDED: I’ve had it with the troll commenters on this post and have closed comments on it. I will publish comments, anonymously if requested, from anyone who emails their comment to yojoe at yochicago dot com with a verifiable identity and phone number.

Very interesting that one of the individuals who works for CRD who you consider so beyond reproach also happens to be spamming craigslist with ads. She appears to be ***GASP*** an apartment locator (I believe the term you use is bedbug). Perhaps next time you should conduct a little research. You’re only making yourself look foolish at this point.

Fact: You refer to a “garbage ad” as an ad with incorrect rent amounts
And here are * FACTS:
* I just did a one bedroom search on CRD for up to $1600 in the South Loop and it produced one result:
A “STUDIO” at Astoria Tower is listed for $1295 on CRD
* Their studio’s are actually starting at $1410.
* You are promoting a company that has “garbage ads” on your site

If you’d been able to understand what I defined as a “garbage ad” – or if you had any integrity – you wouldn’t try to equate an out-of-date rent in an ad with accurate contact info placed by a landlord with a rental service ad that deliberately misstates a critical feature of the property, pulls a rental amount of of thin air, misleads people into thinking they’re contacting someone they’re not, and is run without legal authority.

and I’m not diverting attention here. I am just seeing some hypocrisy on your end so I would just like you to explain how I am seeing it wrong. Or, maybe another reader can explain it to me so I can better understand how and why CRD is different then these “bed bugs”.